June 6, 2014

HOLY WAR

This is a story of the Siege of Beirut
during the Lebanon War. It’s a
disheartening, yet thought-provoking, look at a religious war—about how utterly
senseless and mystifying it is to onlookers.

The story is told through three points
of view. These characters’ lives intersect in strange coincidences that are
usually only believable if they happen in real life, but Bond makes it
convincing. First, there’s Neill, a war
correspondent from England sent on a mission for MI-5 because he is the ex-boyfriend
of Layla, the now wife of Mohammed, who is a powerful and dangerous Hezbollah
leader. Second is Andre, a French commando out to avenge his brother’s death at
the hands of terrorists during the bombing of a US base. Third is Rosa, a
twenty-something Palestinian who sees no side but her own. Although Bond does a
good job of keeping his personal political opinions from seeping into the
story, I found Rosa the most disturbing, as she appears the most uncompromising
in her ideology. Even if her leader, Mohammed, might seek an end to the war,
she will have none of it.

On all sides, there seem to be those few
who want peace, but their voices are drowned out by those calling for blood and
more blood. But how do you stop the inculcation of youth to whatever side they
happened to be born? This quote says it all:

“Calm
down, brother! Tell us, what religion are you?”

The man … trying to gain time to decide if
these men who had grabbed him out of the darkness were Christian or Muslim,
Druze or Hezbollah, Sunni or Shiite, Maronite, Syrian, or Palestinian or
Israeli.

“Answer
right and I kiss you,” one of them said. “Answer wrong and you die.”

As always, a novel is as interesting as
its characters, and the players in Holy War do not disappoint. Each character
brings his/her own perspective to this baffling conflict.

This is a gripping, chilling novel about
the futility of war—especially one based on differences of religion.